Curse of the Muse
by SwimmerNinja13
Summary: Sequel to Kiss the Muse. Things are pretty normal for the ninja. Nya's still recovering from her injuries, and all the ninja are trying to cope with recent events when a new and improved Melina shows up at Nya's door with a warning that they're all in danger. The team must open Cole's fairytale book again to find a mysterious cure in its pages before time runs out.
1. Melina's Warning

**Hey everyone! School was cancelled for tomorrow (we're having a snow day in April!), so I decided to stay up late and write. This is the sequel to Kiss The Muse. I'd strongly suggest reading that first. This is set a couple weeks after the first (in between DoD and HoT). Like the first story, it's not exactly Canon, but it fits within the Canon storyline. Anywho, please enjoy!**

 _"Help me! Someone, please help me!"_

 _The woman staggered through the city clutching to her shawl. People would have thought her drunk, but the village knew she didn't drink._

 _No, she was sick, and she needed help._

 _Villagers scowled at her and dragged their children inside. She heard the slamming of doors and fought back tears. She began to cough, and a greenish enzyme came out. Repulsed at herself, she flicked it onto the ground._

 _"Come in," one woman offered._

 _The woman looked up and instantly recognized the woman, but she wasn't sure from where. She followed her inside and was appalled at what she saw. A man, the woman's husband, lay on a cushion, afflicted with the same disease._

 _She stepped backward in horror, "What have I done?"_

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Nya yawned, "Just a minute!" She set her phone down and slid out of bed. She felt for her crutches in the dark and picked them up. Moments later, after tripping over several clothing articles she had carelessly thrown on the floor the night before, she reached the door.

Nobody was there.

"Really? It's five thirty in the morning! Whichever one of you's messing with me, I will get you!"

"Nobody's up besides you and me Nya," Zane replied from the guys' across the hall, "and I assure you, I wasn't messing with you. Pixal can attest for me."

"I believe you Zane. I was probably just hearing things. Never mind," Nya shut her door and was about to crawl back under her covers when she heard the tapping again. This time, it was clearly coming from her window.

Sighing, she clicked on her light and hobbled across the room. She pulled open the blinds and was met with a smirk that haunted her nightmares.

"Melina," she spoke coolly, "What do you want? How'd you get out of jail?"

Melina rested her arms, "I have my ways. Kryptarium Prison has its weak spots."

"So you came here just to say hi?" Nya folded her arms, "yeah right!"

"No, I came here to warn you."

"Warn me about what?"

"You ninja, are in danger, you especially," Melina replied, "While in Kryptarium, I did my research. I'm dying Nya."

"You deserve it after all you did," Nya retorted.

"It's my curse. You can only steal so many kisses before it effects you. I guess I stole my share. Anyway, where was I? At Kryptarium I got reading, one of those fairytale books like your friend Cole has. There's more to the legend than just the tale of the muse. Unfortunate for the wife, she doesn't get much of a happily ever after. The same disease the muse succumbs to affects her brother and husband and all the other artists."

"So you're saying Jay, Kai, Lloyd, and Zane could all have this disease too?" Nya stepped backwards, shaking her head, "That can't be. Jay, Kai, and Lloyd are perfectly healthy, and Zane's a nindroid. He can't get sick."

"There's hope for them though. The men in the story all get over it. It's yourself you should be worried about," Melina explained.

"Me?"

"Yes, like mono, there's reason to believe the disease is spread by kissing. Assuming you have kissed Jay, the disease is you too, but there's no documentation of a woman ever surviving this. We're ticking time bombs Nya, unless you come with me. I have reason to believe there's a cure."

"Why should I believe you?" Nya asked. It wasn't so much she didn't believe Melina, she saw the concern on her face, it was that she didn't want to.

"After what I did to you, there really is no reason you should. I'm asking you to. Please Nya, let me redeem myself."

"You're right, after what you did to me, I have no reason to believe you. Get away from me! I don't want to see you again!" Nya shouted.

Melina shook her head, "I'm sorry Nya." With that, she spun around and disappeared into the dusk.

Nya sat down on her bed, shaking. She wasn't sure if it from the cold or the news she'd just heard. She couldn't be dying, could she? If she was, how long would she have? Should she have gone with Melina? Her head began to hurt. The others were perfectly healthy. She felt fine. How could she be dying?

A knock on her door shook her out of her thoughts. Jay opened it a crack, "Hey Nya. Zane has breakfast ready... are you okay?"

Nya smiled at him, "my head just hurts a little. I'm fine," she told him. She picked up her crutches and followed him to the kitchen. She felt dizzy like she wasn't fully awake, only she had been up for hours.

The others were already in the kitchen pulling out plates and making coffee. They muttered their habitual "good mornings" and made their way to the table.

 _See, they're perfectly fine,_ Nya told herself. Black dots gathered in her eyes. _Perfectly fine. So am I._

"Nya!" Jay shouted.

The others rushed towards her in slow motion.

 _We're all perfectly fine._

Nya buckled over.

 **Well, that was the first chapter. More will be up soon, or not so soon depending on my motivation. I'm sorry for such a cliffhanger on the first chapter, but I like to keep the plot moving in my stories. There's no time for fluff unless fluff is what I'm going for throughout the whole piece. I hope you all enjoyed. Thanks for reading and reviewing! God bless!**

 **#God's Not Dead!**

 **#Proud Ninjnerd (and book nerd) (and nerd in general)**


	2. Closer To Home Part One

**Hey everyone! I realize it's been awhile, but I've been working on other stories. Right now I'm babysitting my niece for the weekend while my sister and brother in law are out of town, and she's sleeping, so I figured why not spend some time working on this at last? No promises, but I may update some other stories during Hannah's naptimes (I also have to clean the house, babies are messy. I don't know how Margo can handle this all the time), so bear with me. Enough rambling here, enjoy this very overdue chapter!**

 **Skylor Chan: Thanks so much for the support. I'm glad you're excited about this.**

 **Guest: sorry, I like cliff hangers. This is roughly inspired off of an episode of Grimm (more so the first story than this one), and the show had a lot of dramatic cliff hangers before commercial breaks, so I'm doing the same at the end of each chapter as a sort of tribute to Grimm. Thanks for reading, and im glad you're enthusiastic about how this story is going to go.**

 _The woman tended to her husband and the woman who'd shown up with care. She fed them soup and made them remedies until one day her toddler came up to her._

 _"Mama, why are your fingers scabbing over?"_

 _The woman looked down at her hands and gasped. She'd tried hard to conceal the scabs marking the disease from her son, but now that the disease had spread to her, there was no hiding it._

 _"I'm sorry. Mama's really sick."_

 _She took a deep breath. The scabs sealed her fate. There wasn't much time left._

"Nya?"

"Are you alright?"

"What even happened?"

"Do you think she's okay?"

Nya opened her eyes to find all of her team mates staring down at her. The fuzziness left her mind, and it all came back to her. Suddenly not everything seemed fine anymore.

"Nya, do you feel okay?"

Nya sat up, "Cole, I need to see your fairytale book!"

"Uh, okay?" Cole replied. He got up and left to go find it.

"What's going on Nya?" Jay asked. He pulled her to her feet and looked her in the eyes.

"I wish I knew," Nya replied, "Melina stopped by my window earlier and..."

"Wait, Melina was let out of prison?" Kai interrupted.

"More like she let herself out... Anyway, she has come down with some disease, she said it was spread by kissing, and we might have it."

"How bad is it?" Lloyd asked.

"For you guys, if I understood correctly, you'll survive," Nya answered.

Jay tightened his grip on Nya's hands, "and what about you?"

Nya shook her head.

"Is there a cure?"

"Melina thinks so, but I, I don't know if I believe her," Nya responded.

"If it true, we'll find it. I promise Nya, we'll find it."

(Time skip)

Melina clicked through web pages on her laptop as she sat underneath layers of blankets in her basement. She knew there had to be a cure out there, she just wasn't sure where. After hours of research, she had found nothing.

A knock at her door brought her back to the real world. Her house hardly received visitors, and the ignorant guards at Kryptarium Prison had yet to realize she'd escaped, so she figured it could only be Nya here to take back what she'd said and accept her offer.

It wasn't Nya. It was her brother.

"Kai," Melina greeted coolly, "how good to see you. I haven't seen you since your sister had me arrested on the hospital rooftop."

"Save the pleasantries. I've got questions, and I need answers!" Kai snapped. He barged inside.

"Of course you do. Ask away."

"What do you know about the cure?"

"It's closer to home than you'd think," Melina replied.

"Gee, that's helpful," Kai retorted.

"That's all I know, honest! In one version of the legend, the husband finds the cure after his wife dies and says the cure was closer to home than he would have thought," Melina held both hands in the air, "if I knew more I'd tell you."

Kai pulled out a slip of paper with his number, "Fine. I believe you. But if you find out anything else, you will tell me right away otherwise you will wish you did."

(Time skip)

Kai flung open the door to the temple to find the other ninja, Wu, and Misako gathered around the kitchen table with at least twenty books open to random pages.

"Kai! There you are! Where'd you go?" Lloyd greeted.

"I needed to clear my head," he replied.

"So you disappeared for eight hours? Look, I know it's a lot to take in, but going off on your own doesn't help anybody," Nya frowned at him. She locked eyes with him, and Kai turned away.

"I don't want to get into it right now Nya," Kai exited to the back patio refusing to look back, knowing that if he did, he'd never forgive himself for the hurt he caused Nya.

 **Sorry. I love to end these stories with cliffies. Next chapter you can expect more answers, and of course more questions. I'll try to update soon. Fortunately it is summer, so there won't be a six month gap between chapters again. Thanks for reading!**

 **#God's Not Dead!**


	3. Discoveries and Promises

**Hey everyone! Thanks for all your patience as this chapter truly took a long time to write. Unfortunately my computer crashed once before I could save this, so I ended up rewriting a decent chunk of it which didn't really help. Fortunately though, I'm a lot happier with how the second portion of the chapter turned out after rewriting, and I think it is a lot better than the first one. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy.**

 **Guest: Thanks so much! I'm glad you like it!**

 **LovetheLord: Thanks. I'm glad to be back, as sporadic as that can be.**

 **RandomDragon2.0: Glad you like it! Thanks for reading.**

 _She found it harder and harder to care for her husband and the woman as her illness increased. Eventually the husband began to heal. But as he returned to normal, the woman's symptoms escalated. She could hardly walk across the room without feeling faint, and the sores on her fingertips worsened causing searing pain whenever she bent them._

 _The woman cast a weary glance towards her child. How she hoped he would be alright after she was gone. Hopefully she would be able to see his third birthday._

 _How little time was left._

"Kai?" Nya opened the back door and joined her brother outside, "Can we please talk?"

"Fine," Kai gave in. He scorched over, making room for Nya on the step, "I'm sorry for earlier. I just needed to breathe."

"It's okay. We all did. I did drop a bit of a bombshell this morning," Nya took a seat beside him, "But Kai, I need you to be here. Up until yesterday my future I thought was certain. Jay and I were going to get married, buy a house, have three kids..."

"Whoa! Slow down! Who said I was going to let you marry that dork?" Kai interrupted, "Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?"

Nya laughed bitterly, "That's beside the point. But now, I don't even know how much longer I have."

"We'll figure it out, I promise," Kai assured her, "I know I wasn't exactly here for you today..."

"Exactly? You weren't here at all!" Nya interrupted.

"Whatever. But from now on, I'm here for you to talk. You know I love you sis?" Kai continued.

"Yeah. I do," Nya replied, "love you too, bro."

"Hey guys!" Cole burst through the door, "Since nobody really felt like cooking, we ordered pizza. It's in the kitchen if you want some!"

"Thanks Cole, we'll be there in a second!" Nya answered. She turned to Kai, "There's one more thing. I looked at the tracker on your phone. I know where you went earlier. Just make sure you know what you're doing."

"I will, don't worry," Kai smirked, "let's go join the others."

The others sat wearily around the table eating their pizza when Kai and Nya joined them. Nya wedged between Jay and Cole who rapidly filled her in on what they'd found since she had gone outside.

Kai listened from the outside gathering bits and pieces of what the rest of the team had discovered that day. The disease was called Holgaria, and although its origins were unknown, it was proven to be spread through kissing. Mostly men were affected by it, but all the woman that did contract it died. Symptoms included wheezing, producing a greenish form, sores and scabbing around the fingertips fevers, a severe chills and weakness. Kai shivered at the sound of it all. He certainly wasn't looking forward to coming down with this disease.

What scared him more was Nya. She looked completely healthy, everyone did, but he had no idea how or when the disease would strike. Should the ninja have Nya admitted to the hospital? No, Kai decided. Nya would never be able to sit still waiting to die. It just wasn't her, and Kai wanted more than anything for Nya to be happy.

As dinner came to a close, Jay took Nya by the hand and dragged her outside. Since the news that morning, everyone with the exception of Kai hadn't left Nya alone. Jay could tell by Nya's weary expressions that she could use some space.

"How are you holding up?" Jay asked as they sat down.

Nya winced, "I just want everything to go back to normal."

"Me too."

Nya leaned against Jay's shoulder and closed her eyes, "This was not the way I hoped our story would go."

They stayed there for a while. Jay held Nya close, "I'll stay with you, for as long as it takes. We'll figure this out."

Nya smiled. At some point Nya fell asleep. Jay picked her up and brought her inside and laid her on her bed, "Sleep well Nya. Stay healthy," Jay whispered. _I can't stand to lose you again._

Nya exhaled softly and turned her head. Jay grinned and placed a kiss on her forehead while promising himself to never forget the way Nya smiled in her sleep or the soft rhythm of her breath.

"I love you, Nya."

(Time skip)

 _She laid awake that night nauseated. She threw off her covers in a fit of heat then quickly pulled them back over herself as shivers took over her body. No matter what way she turned, she couldn't get comfortable. Her head throbbed and her throat was chalky. It felt a weight sat on her chest, squeezing it so her breathing was shallow. The raw tips of her fingers left red stains along the edges of her sheets. She wanted more then anything to escape this, to escape her body, to drift to sleep and never wake up until this was over._

 _She wanted to claw away at her own flesh the way one would pick a scab until she was free._

 _She didn't have the strength to do any of that, so she laid there limp until the early morning when she felt a mist surround her. She figured it was her imagination._

 _"Just let this end," she pleaded with the mist. "I want this to end."_

 _The mist envelopes her, filling her lungs and burning her insides._

 _This was not how she imagined it. She'd imagined quick and painless, but this, this was agonizing. This was choking her, burning her. Every little spike of pain she felt._

 _She couldn't stand it. This was worse than the disease._

 _She opened her mouth, and with what strength she had left, screamed until no noise came out of her throat any longer._

"Nya! Nya wake up!" Kai shouted. He shook his sister gently, but she wouldn't stop screaming.

Nya opened her eyes and looked past Kai and Jay, who were both holding her hands, past the remaining ninja gathered at her door trying to figure out what was going on, into nothing.

"Nya, you're scaring me!" Kai shouted, "What's going on?" The way Nya's eyes met his but were looking through him sent shivers down his spine. It was like she saw him but not really.

Nya's eyes slowly came into focus. She examined her hands for scabbing and found none, although she saw they were unblemished, she still shook violently. She gasped for breath and tried to calm herself.

"It's okay Nya," Jay barely whispered, "You were only dreaming. None of it's real."

Nya shook her head. She thought back to the ending of the Muse story she'd read earlier, the woman's gruesome death at the end. "No, it was real."

 **#God's Not Dead!**


End file.
